Our Italian
cell phone works! We relied on it for communication with our son, Jonathan,
who called us yesterday morning to tell us his ferry had safely arrived
in Olbia, but that there were no buses on Sunday. We were in Castelsardo,
an old fishing village built in tiers up the rocky promontory. Steep alleys
wind up to the castle sitting on the summit: a spectacular sight. We suggested
he hitchhike. Mid afternoon he called to say he had found a bus to Porto
Torres, 15 miles west of us, arriving at 5:15 PM, so off came the lines
and we were underway. As we approached the rather grubby, commercial port
at 5 P.M., the phone rang a third time. Jonathan's bus had arrived early.
He was on the dock to take the lines from his mother, as we motored in
at 5:30. We had a wonderful reunion.

The following
day, we whisked him away to experience an idyllic summer sail and his
first Mediterranean anchorage: a lovely bay crowded with boats by day,
but emptied of all the daytrippers after dusk. We are anchored in Baia
Santa Reparata, surrounded by the wind and wave washed boulders of Capo
Testa, which is a rocky promontory connected to the mainland by a thin
sandbar. The headland houses ancient and modern quarries, which supplied
the Romans with the granite for the columns in the Pantheon. The anchorages
are getting more and more crowded, but so far we still share them with
few boats at night. And each evening the heat of the day also leaves with
the crowd and it is cool and pleasant for dining and sleeping.